Environmental Management System: Implementations, Voluntary Adoption, Issues, and Limitations in Australian Agriculture Sector

This essay discusses the implementation, voluntary adoption, issues, and limitations of Environmental Management System (EMS) in Australian agriculture sector. It covers the key objectives of EMS, ISO 14001:2015 and 14040:2006, barriers in implementation, and ways to overcome them. The essay emphasizes the significance of EMS in the agriculture sector and how the government can support its implementation and remove all the barriers.

Running Head: Environmental Management System
Environmental Management System
Essay
System04104
9/11/2018

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Environmental Management Systems: Implementations, Voluntary
Adoption, Issues, and limitations in Australian Agriculture sector
Environmental management system (EMS) plays a major role in Australian agriculture as
well as in the step taken by the government against the mass destruction of natural resources
and environmental pollution. The agriculture sector is an essential part of the Australian
economy and plays a key role in Australian development and its economic growth. The
agriculture sector helps in the processing of food, fibre, and ornate products. The EMS
system is a systematic approach of the Australian government that focuses on sustainable
development of agriculture sector along with other agriculture business such as fisheries,
beef, dairy, and cotton production and in its supply chain. Actually, EMS is a management
tool that works in cooperation with other Australian environmental programs and support
farmers, as well as many other businesses, depend on agriculture (Lewandowska, 2011).
EMS helps the agricultural sector and other industries to improve the efficiency in their
operations or in the production of goods by guiding, controlling, and managing their impact
on the environment and ensure there should not be any further damage to it. The Australian
government continuously spread awareness among the farmers to adopt the EMS system. The
ministry of agriculture and Resource management both working together and develop a
framework for EMS, that inspires people to voluntarily adopt and implement the EMS in both
agriculture and other industrial sectors.
1. What is EMS?
EMS is a system-based approach of the Australian government that focuses on proper
planning, implementation, reviewing, and improving the operations of a business or farmer
takes to meet its environmental obligation to improve the environmental performance under
any state, local, or federal government. Many organisation use international voluntary
standard ISO 14001:2015 as a model for an EMS. The ISO 14001:2015 includes several
guidelines that an organisation must follow to protect preventive to improve their
environmental performance (Nguyen, et.al, 2014). There are some other programs regulated
by government in order to take a preventive step against environmental pollutions are only
part of EMS system such as BMPs (Best Management Practices).

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2. Key objectives of EMS
EMS both supports and controls the agriculture sector as well as agribusiness organisation
such as fisheries, beef, cotton, dairy etc. and supports these organisations to accomplish a
number of tasks including good product quality and safety, reducing expenditures, product
integrity, and protecting the environment. Although they key objectives of EMS are as
follow:
1. Analyse the impact of various agricultural and agribusiness activities for
environmental review.
2. Proper management of hazardous waste
3. Develop an environmental policy
4. Wildlife management
5. Environmental protection by reducing pollution
6. Cropland Nutrient Management
7. Protect the soil, water, and animals.
3. ISO 14001:2015 and 14040:2006
ISO 14001:2015 supports and specifies the obligation for an EMS system that can be used by
an organisation in order to improve its environmental performance. The ISO 14001:2015
supports those organisations, which are looking towards managing their environmental
obligations and accountabilities in a systematic manner, which helps to contribute to the
environmental pillar of sustainability. ISO 14001:2015 serve as the supportive program for
EMS that helps the organisations to achieve intended outcomes in order to improve their
environmental responsibilities. ISO 14001:2015 applies to any types of the organisation
regardless of their size, nature, or type of activities and applies the environmental aspects of
its activities, and product and services. ISO 14001:2015 does not consider any specific
environmental performance standards apart from EMS rather it supports the EMS program of
government (de Oliveira, et.al, 2017).
The ISO 14040:2006 covers life cycles assessment (LCA) studies and life cycle inventory
studies. It does not define the LCA system and procedure in detail, nor does it postulate
methodologies for the separate stages of the LCA. ISO 14040:20016 covers the basic
information about the life cycle assessment including its goals, scope, inventory analysis,
interpretation phase, impact assessment, limitations, and the relationship between two LCA

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phases. This is also an ISO standard tool that provides assistance to the proper
implementation of EMS in Australia (ISO, 2006).
4. EMS Adoption/Implementation
Adoption of EMS is the major issue in the agriculture sector because the Australian
government is still fighting properly implement it in the farming sector. Although, they offer
their people to voluntary adoption of EMS because of lack of strict policy and guidelines
people generally avoid adopting the EMS. The proper implementation of EMS in Australian
agriculture needs proper awareness of social, economic, and ecological issues in the country.
The EMS program of the government addressed as a tool that helps in the ecological
sustainable development of the country (Collins, et.al, 2016). The key objective behind the
adoption of EMS is to ensure environmental improvements and protection of natural
resources from mass destruction. The Australian government focuses on voluntary adoption
of EMS system in all the sector including agriculture sector but it is not easy as it perceives to
others because of most f the farmers unaware what they should do in their farming process to
environmental improvements. This means there are some barriers that country faces about to
implementation and adoption of EMS system in Australia.
5. Issues and Barriers in Implementation of EMS
EMS implementation in Australian agriculture sector is regulated by the government.
However, there are some issues and challenges arise in the implementation and adoption of
the EMS in both agriculture and organisational level. The implementation and certification is
the main barrier identified in the agriculture sector (Cary and Roberts, 2011). The main
causes behind the proper implementation of EMS are as follow:
1. The scarcity of environmental information for use in agriculture EMS
2. Indefinable and undiscoverable market benefits from EMS implementation in the
agriculture sector.
3. The cost of implementation and certification of EMS in the agriculture sector
4. Transaction cost in the generation or acquiring new environmental information
5. Auditing cost
6. Not suitable for the small size of organisations
Ultimately, the success of EMS in the country depends on how farmers in different
agricultural industries adopt it. The adoption of EMS in agriculture sector depends on the

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large number of measures such as how government remove the above-discussed hurdles, how
farmers adopt it, and the financial benefits to both farmers and businesspersons.
6. Overcoming the barriers to adoption and implementation of EMS
To overcome such issues the government should identify and disclosed the intangible market
benefits and should aware the community on environmental management in agriculture and
its application in agriculture system. Proper implementation of EMS system needs to consider
the specific issues of agricultural food production and evaluate it under environmental
standards. To remove the barrier of elusive market benefits from on-farm EMS
implementation the government should provide incentives to farmers. The Australian
government should also provide other alternative benefits and encourage them for
implementing EMS and demonstrating the improvements in the outcome of environmental
performance (Daddi, et. al, 2016).
To overcome the environmental information barrier the government should focus on
providing adequate environmental information to the farmers regarding farming and
agriculture sector thus they can get better use of EMS. To support the EMS adoption program
government should work with different industry to get relevant information regarding
agriculture and agri-business operations. The government can also use some other
information sources, which already exist in various catchments, and environmental programs,
which is regulated by the government itself. The cost of compliance barrier is also preventing
the implementation of EMS in the agriculture sector. To reduce the cost of getting
information from other sources, the government should focus on providing adequate
environmental information to the farmers by decreasing the transaction cost. To reduce the
auditing cost the government should appoint a private individual's auditing organisation,
which helps both private and public sector organisations in implementing of EMS and helps
to reduce its implementation cost as well. The small business organisation assumes that they
will not be benefited from the government-supported EMS (Leung and Yang, 2012). The
government should focus on raising awareness amongst farmers and growers about the EMS.
Another main barrier that should be overcome by the Australian government is the rural
adjustment barrier that determines the socio-economic development of high-income
countries.

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7. Conclusion
The success of EMS in agriculture sector depends on how farmers in diverse agriculture
industries adopt and implement it. However, the significance of EMS in the agriculture
sector, whether or not farmers choose to implement it, it depends on how government support
the implementation of EMS and remove all the barriers. Although the high significance of
EMS in agriculture sector gives enormous promise to the development of farmers that leads
to economic development of the country. It is fact and not necessary that the voluntary
adoption of EMS system results in high participation rates of farmers and industrialist in the
implementation of EMS. Certainly, high participation rates would not necessarily be
connected with good environmental outcomes or results. Thus, the government should focus
on production-oriented and farm-relevant environmental information for use in EMS. The
government should make wise policy choices and should make it mandatory for every person
to adopt and implement EMS in the agriculture as well as other industries.

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References
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